Once I was in Paris again. It was delightful, for now it was spring, or nearly so, and the weather was pleasant. People were pouring into the city in droves from all over the world. It was nearly midnight when I arrived. My trunk, which I had sent on ahead, was somewhere in the limbo of advance trunks and I had a hard time getting it. Parisian porters and depot attendants know exactly when to lose all understanding of English and all knowledge of the sign language. It is when the search for anything becomes the least bit irksome. The tip they expect to get from you spurs them on a little way, but not very far. Let them see that the task promises to be somewhat wearisome and they disappear entirely. I lost two facteurs in this way, when they discovered that the trunk was not ready to their hand, and so I had to turn in and search among endless trunks myself. When I found it, a facteur was quickly secured to truck it out to a taxi. And, not at all wonderful to relate, the first man I had employed now showed up to obtain his pourboire. “Oh, here you are!” I exclaimed, as I was getting into my taxi. “Well, you can go to the devil!” He pulled a long face. That much English he knew.
When I reached the hotel in Paris I found Barfleur registered there but not yet returned to his room. But several letters of complaint were awaiting me: Why hadn’t I telegraphed the exact hour of my arrival; why hadn’t I written fully? It wasn’t pleasant to wait in uncertainty. If I had only been exact, several things could have been arranged for this day or evening. While I was meditating on my sins of omission and commission, a chasseur bearing a note arrived. Would I dress and come to G.’s Bar. He would meet me at twelve. This was Saturday night, and it would be good to look over Paris again. I knew what that meant. We would leave the last restaurant in broad daylight, or at least the Paris dawn.
Coming down on the train from Brussels I had fallen into a blue funk—a kind of mental miasma—one of the miseries Barfleur never indulged in. They almost destroy me. Barfleur never, in so far as I could see, succumbed to the blues. In the first place my letter of credit was all but used up—my funds were growing terrifyingly low; and it did not make me any more cheerful to realize that my journey was now practically at an end. A few more days and I would be sailing for home.
When, somewhat after twelve, I arrived at G.’s Bar I was still a little doleful. Barfleur was there. He had just come in. That indescribable Parisian tension—that sense of life at the topmost level of nervous strength and energy—was filling this little place. The same red-jacketed musicians; the same efficient, inconspicuous, attentive and courteous waiters; Madame G., placid, philosophic, comfy, businesslike and yet motherlike, was going to and fro, pleasingly arrayed, looking no doubt after the interests, woes, and aspirations of her company of very, very bad but beautiful “girls.” The walls were lined with life-loving patrons of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, with their female companions. Barfleur was at his best. He was once more in Paris—his beloved Paris. He beamed on me in a cheerful, patronizing way.
“So there you are! The Italian bandits didn’t waylay you, even if they did rob you, I trust? The German Empire didn’t sit too heavily on you? Holland and Switzerland must have been charming as passing pictures. Where did you stop in Amsterdam?”
“At the Amstel.”
“Quite right. An excellent hotel. I trust Madame A. was nice to you?”
“She was as considerate as she could be.”
“Right and fitting. She should have been. I saw that you stopped at the National, in Lucerne. That is one of the best hotels in Europe. I was glad to see that your taste in hotels was not falling off.”
We began with appetizers, some soup, and a light wine. I gave a rough summary of some things I had seen, and then we came to the matter of my sailing date and a proposed walking trip in England.